In 1973, after Pierre Trudeau had pulled in only two MPs ahead of Progressive Conservative Leader Robert Stanfield, with David Lewis’s NDP holding the balance of power, the government was unexpectedly defeated in a parliamentary vote and Stanfield announced the existence of a ”moral imperative” for Trudeau to resign or request a new election. Instead, Trudeau redoubled incentives for the NDP and had a motion adopted declaring that the previous lost vote was of no significance, and soldiered on in the imperishable Liberal confidence that they are the natural and ordained party of government. That is not an incomprehensible conviction given that in the past 126 years, since the elevation of Wilfrid Laurier in 1896, the Liberals have governed for 86 years.
